Rhythmic recollections

Mike Joyce has released a memoir of his time as a member of The Smiths. He tells Jude Rogers about 'The Drums', and his memories of the group's giddy, era-defining five-year lifespan

- Jude Rogers

One Thursday in November 1983, just after 7.30pm, an ex-punk sat bathed in pink light at the BBC Television Centre. Just 20 years old, he drummed in a band that had only existed for 10 months: friend-of-a-friend Johnny Marr on guitar, Andy Rourke, Marr’s schoolmate, on bass, and a singer, Morrissey, swinging gladioli round his head like a cowboy with a lasso, crooning about punctured bicycles and jumped-up pantry boys.

“We all clicked straight away,” says Mike Joyce, sitting in a plant-filled room at his house in Sale, Greater Manchester. He's reminiscing about The Smiths, the band he was in for less than five years but will be forever associated with. Now 62, sporting a stripy sweater, smart specs and a tiny, silver quiff, he's less cool or eccentric rock'n'roll veteran than a sweet, groovy dad with a Tiggerish energy, hard to interrupt as he chats nineteen to the dozen about “incredible times”. He recalls The Smiths' iconic Top of the Pops debut playing “This Charming Man”, after which they leapt on a train to play to a sold-out, 1,500-capacity crowd at Manchester's Hacienda. “We’d come a long way from Cath Berry [their hairdresser's sister] clapping alone in February,” he writes in his new memoir, The Drums.

Titled after the way Morrissey listed Joyce on their enigmatic, film-referencing album sleeves,